Americana

neighbor and his neighbor and his neighbor. The death circus is coming to town and benign totalitarianism is the only feasible response.'

'I'm not a journalist,' I said.

'Whoever you are, you're welcome. Everybody's welcome. Love lives in our own galaxy. We sing at nine.'

'Jill said you've seen a lot of UFOs out in the desert.'

'He calls them love-objects,' she said.

'I've seen them by the score. Night things filled with love. But they won't land until the time is right. The thing is out there. Jupiter and beyond the infinite.'

'I have my own theory about UFOs,' I said. 'They're not from outer space at all. They're from the oceans. The depths of our own oceans.'

'Who pilots them?' Jill said.

'Dolphins.'

'He's just kidding,' she said to Incredible Shrinking Man.

She and I continued the tour. A few Apaches played cards inside one of the huts. The girl Verna was still holding the Indian child. A group of eight young men and women, all of them appearing a few years older than Jill, sat in the dirt playing a game of jacks. A boy of fourteen or so, an Indian, knelt at the fringe of the group; there were two fielder's gloves and a baseball on the ground beside him. I picked up one of the gloves, a very old Luke Appling model. I spat into the palm and pounded it a few times. The boy got up and we walked slowly past the last of the huts and started playing catch. At first we stood only thirty feet apart and tossed the ball easily back and forth, limbering up. Then we doubled the distance and began to throw a bit harder. Then he moved back another ten feet and started firing. It was dry and very hot at the rim of the desert. I felt wonderful. The boy had a strong and accurate arm. The glove was soft with use, not as well padded as the later models, and my hand began to sting. He moved still farther away and I tossed him some high flies, which he fired back on a line. I took off my shirt. The sun felt good and my face and neck and upper body broke into lavish sweat. He moved across the dirt and weeds, kicking up dust, purposely delaying his break for the ball so that he could make an over-the-shoulder or backhand catch. My hand hurt badly now and I could not recall feeling this good in many years. I continued throwing long high flies, first to one side, then the next, and the boy veered and cut and back-pedaled, always sure of his terrain, dodging the larger stones without taking his eye oif the ball. Sweat was collecting at my navel and I would rub it off with my right hand and then rub my hand in the dirt and wipe off the sticky dirt on my pants and blow on my hand then, drying it further, and then lean back and heave another long arching fly into the mouth of the sun. All trace of lettering had long since vanished from the baseball.

We walked back to the village. I draped my shirt over my neck. Jill came toward us and the boy was gone. We sat on the ground and she put one finger to my chest and then touched her lips with it. We stared at each other for a moment.

'Why does he dye his hair blue?' I said.

'Vanity.'

'To what end?'

'Vanity's end,' she said. 'It's silly for a person to repress his own vanity. Make love to your body and you kill the death inside you.'

'There are certain inconsistencies here.'

'I think his hair is beautiful. Why shouldn't he have blue hair if he wants to? Do you feel it threatens you in some way? Really seriously now, what harm is he doing? If you let yourself be what you want to be, physically and spiritually, you can kill a lot of the death inside you.'

'I love to be instructed by the very young. It implies I'm not yet a lost cause.'

'I could never instruct you,' she said. 'And I could never get mad at you. It's not just the brother thing either. You're so beautiful.'

' And that's important, you think.'

'Youth and beauty are always important. It's what the death police hate most. They want to kill us and fuck us at the same time.'

'I admit he's a striking figure. I suppose the Indians think he's a god.'

'The Indians think he's a fag,' she said, and she giggled for a bit, then slapped herself on the wrist as punishment.

'Your gums show when you smile,' I said. 'It gives me an almost death-dealing pleasure.'

'I got all shivery when I touched you before.'

'Do it again.'

'I better not,' she said.

'Your eyes are hazel.'

'Do you want to stay with us?'

'I don't know. Maybe I'd better keep right on going. I'm trying to outrun myself.'

'Is this like a suicidal period?'

'I don't think so.'

'If it is, my dad could probably help. He's a great guy. So then my screamy mother takes her repressions out on him.'

'Did you watch me while I was playing catch with the kid?'

'A-mazing.'

'Baseball is so beautiful and lazy. It's our version of the cafe life. You sit there and nothing happens. I really love it. The season's underway now. If this were 1955 I could be sitting in the bleachers at the old Polo Grounds, watching the Giants play the Cubs. All around me there would be shirtless old men with sunken pink chests and their pants rolled up over their bony knees. What is it like? It's like a seashore at the end of time. Jill, your hazel eyes destroy me. It's nice sitting here. A spot of small talk with our dusty tea. Fatigue is such a luxury these days.'

'You should stay,' she said.

'Somebody's coming by to get me. I'm surprised he hasn't turned up yet.'

'This is a part of the world,' she said, 'where people don't always turn up.'

We walked back to the hut. Incredible Shrinking Man was standing out front, almost as high as the hut itself, wearing just the bermudas, his body a rich tempered tone of pennies, the blue hair hanging lank, strands of deep muscle extending along his arms. It was an astounding sight and as we approached I slid my shirt down off my neck and put it on. Later the Apache boy came for me and we took a sponge bath together behind his hut and then everyone gathered around several fires for hamburgers and corn, and a girl played a guitar and sang some western ballads, and still Clevenger did not come. In the darkness at the edge of the assembly I kissed little Jill and touched her softly beating hooded breast and she put her finger to my wrist. Incredible Shrinking Man walked into the desert for the feast of his infinity, white dwarfs and waltzing binaries, the first fictional inch of the space od-yssey. Hogue, Jill and I settled down to sleep in the Matisse hut. A small fire burned. Hogue told of his life in Canada and Mexico, the search for gold, then God, then the perfect vacuum; his grandfather had prospected near this very site, a gunslinging man who was not averse to mule-meat, but his father, the all too timid issue of the panning days, had ended up in hardware. The three of us lay far apart. Soon the fire died and I thought she would come to me in the darkness, freckled Mescalero maid smelling of leather and sagebrush. But she did not come. And at dawn I woke to see Incredible Shrinking Man leaning into the hut, his naked body stained with the blood of the rattler he held in his hand. Jill got up and moved toward him and they went silently to whatever place they went for the ablutions of late and early man.

The Cadillac was waiting. We had just finished lunch and Jill walked with me toward the road. Clevenger stood outside the car, wearing new boots and smoking a cigarillo. Jill said goodbye at the foot of the embankment and I asked her to wait a moment. I got my suitcases out of the trunk, emptied both, and then filled one with almost all of my remaining clothes and slid it down to her.

'You can sell this stuff and get some food.'

'Don't go,' she said. 'It's bad out there.'

For the first time since I had met Clevenger we were heading east, south and east, and if he seemed less happy it might have been nothing more than the tight fit of new boots. He asked me to get his sunglasses out of the